The National Portrait Gallery Presents THE GREAT WAR IN PORTRAITS Exhibit, Feb. 27

The National Portrait Gallery stages the first national exhibition of the First World War centenary commemorations, opening tomorrow Thursday 27 February 2014. The Great War in Portraits (27 February-15 June 2014) marks the start of a four-year public programme at the Gallery of displays and events, and workshops for young people.

The exhibition strikingly brings together for the first time German expressionist masterpieces by Lovis Corinth and Max Beckmann and Ludwig Kirchner's painting Selbstbildnis als Soldat (Self-portrait as a Soldier) with Harold Gillies' rarely shown photographs of facially injured soldiers from the Royal College of Surgeons.

Showing how the First World War was depicted and reported with a degree of visual detail unprecedented in the history of conflict, the exhibition includes photography and film as well as formal portraits. Rather than presenting a military history of the War, the Gallery aims to focus on its human aspect, concentrating on the way the Great War was represented through portraits of those involved, an approach never previously adopted.

The Great War in Portraits takes an international perspective. As well as iconic portraits of Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen and Winston Churchill, the exhibition reflects the war experience of those from all social classes who served from throughout the Commonwealth.

Highlights also include Jacob Epstein's The Rock Drill, one of the great early modernist works related to the War; a contrasted pairing of British and German films devoted to the Battle of the Somme never previously seen together; and a rare photograph by Jules Gervais Courtellemont depicting a deserted, battle-scarred landscape. The only work in the exhibition not to depict people, this poignant image is, in effect, a portrait of absence.

Starting with the eve of war, the exhibition includes imposing formal portraits of the heads of state of the participating nations, evoking those countries that would be drawn into the conflict in 1914. Such grand images are brought into sharp contrast with an understated press photograph of a pathetic-looking Gavrilo Princip, the 19-year-old student whose opportunistic assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, on 28 June 1914 precipitated the First World War.

The Great War in Portraits shows how, following the declarations of war throughout Europe, power devolved from the heads of state to the military leaders of each country. Power-portraits of Haig, Blumer, Foch, Hindenburg and others, are contrasted with portraits of the 'followers,' by Sickert, Orpen and other war artists.

In the central section titled 'The Valiant and the Damned', Portraits portraits of Victoria Cross holders, medal-winners, heroes and aces are shown juxtaposed with depictions of those whose lives were marked in different ways: casualties, those disfigured by wounds, prisoners of war, and those shot at dawn for cowardice. The idealised language of formal portraits, used as celebration and eulogy, is brought into violent discord with those images, such asnotably a selection of Henry Tonks's pastels of servicemen grotesquely disfigured by wounds, that reveal individual suffering and the human cost of war.

An installation of 40 photographs in a regular grid formation presents a range of protagonists from medal winners and heroes to the dead and the executed, interspersed with artists, poets, memoirists and images representing the roles played by women, the home front and, the Commonwealth.

Key loans have been secured from Imperial War Museums, Tate, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus undKunstbau, Munich, Allen Memorial Art Museum, the Royal Airforce Museum, Hendon, Oberlin College, Ohio, The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.

The exhibition and the Gallery's First World War activities are part of First World War Centenary, the national partnership of commemorative events www.1914.org

The exhibition is curated by Paul Moorhouse, Curator of Twentieth Century Portraits, National Portrait Gallery,London. He says: 'The Great War in Portraits explores a complex range of human experience. Evoking different roles, responsibilities and destinies, it illuminates the way war was represented through portraits of individuals - each caught up in events beyond reason or control.'

THE GREAT WAR IN PORTRAITS

27 Feb-15 Jun 2014, at the National Portrait Gallery, London www.npg.org.uk Admission free

Spring Season 2014 sponsored by Herbert Smith Freehills

PUBLICATION

The exhibition will be complemented by a fully-illustrated book by Paul Moorhouse with an essay by Sebastian Faulks andwill be available to purchase from the National Portrait Gallery bookshop priced £18.95 paperback.

The Gallery has also programmed a range of activities around the exhibition and the Centenary. As well as displays devoted to women at war and wartime photographs these also include:

NATIONAL MEMORY - LOCAL STORIES

National Memory - Local Stories is a creative participation project, funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, and led by the National Portrait Gallery, London, in partnership with Media 19 and five national and local area museums across the UK: National Museums Northern Ireland, National Museums Scotland, Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales, The Rifles (Berkshire and Wiltshire) Museum and Redbridge Museum. This innovative project explores how the discovery of locally relevant objects from museum collections, via creative digital media production workshops, can engage young people and artists in responding to significant moments in the history of the First World War.

KEEP THE HOME FIRES BURNING (Jul - Dec 2014)

This display will comprise over 25 photographs from the period leading up to and during the Great War and explore, through established performers who topped the music hall variety bills and the rising stars of musical revues and comedies, the part played in the war effort by the music halls - the "silly patriotic music halls" as described by Siegfried Sassoon. The selection will include portraits of established stars of the music hall stage, notably: male impersonator and 'Britain's best recruiting sergeant' Vesta Tilley, and her husband Walter de Frece, who was knighted for his services to the war effort; Ivor Novello; Marie Lloyd; Florrie Forde; tenor John McCormack; Ella Shields and Harry Lauder who was one of the most prodigious performers during the War.

MUSIC

The Portrait Choir will give two special performances devoted to, or inspired by the First World War. One will include readings of war poetry interspersed by excerpts from Handel's war oratorios. And the other will include the world premiere of a new musical commission setting texts from the period. The Friday Late Shift music programme will also include vocal and chamber music from the war years and aftermath including two carefully crafted responses by world-renowned British violinist Peter Sheppard Skaevard.

EVENTS

The Gallery's public programme of events explores the First World War from a wide range of perspectives. A literary season includes lectures by Kate Adie, Max Hastings and Jeremy Paxman discussing their respective books: Fighting on the Home Front - The Legacy of Women in World War One; Catastrophe; and Great Britain's Great War. Maxillofacial surgeon Iain Hutchison will lead a discussion entitled Repairing the Wounds looking at the pioneering work of plastic surgeons and the depictions of wounded men by Henry Tonks. Historians Nick Lloyd and David Reynolds will investigate the final months of the war and aftermath whilst historian CharlesEmmerson introduces the season with a survey of 1913.

National Portrait Gallery, St Martin's Place WC2H 0HE, opening hours Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday: 10am - 6pm (Gallery closure commences at 5.50pm) Late Opening: Thursday, Friday: 10am - 9pm (Gallery closure commences at 8.50pm) Nearest Underground:Leicester Square/Charing Cross General information: 0207 306 0055 Recorded information: 020 7312 2463 Website www.npg.org.uk

About the First World War Centenary Partnership

2014 - 2018 marks the Centenary of the First World War, a landmark anniversary for Britain and the world. The First World War Centenary Partnership, led by IWM is a growing network of more than 1,400 local, regional, national and international cultural and educational organisations who together will be presenting a vibrant programme of cultural events and activities, and digital platforms which will enable millions of people across the world to discover more about life in the First World War. For more information visit www.1914.org